Environment/Energy/Wildlife

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into [gasoline, diesel and jet fuels]. What’s more, the microbes are able to do this without any help from enzyme additives.

I was distressed to hear FDA’s Robert Dickey’s statements on the show, He claimed (without any substantiating evidence) that “The seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is safe to consume for all consumers including pregnant women and children;” [in quantities hard for anyone to eat in a given time] … The FDA’s comments are simply not consistent with the reality [ordinary quantities can cause harm].

A handful of billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates have joined Democrats in calling for an elimination of the breaks, saying that the current system adds to the budget deficit, contributes to the widening income gap between the richest and the rest of society, and shifts the tax burden onto small businesses and the middle class.

Anti-Trust

Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn, who has opposed the merger from the start, said today in a statement that “the chances that AT&T will take over T-Mobile are almost gone…. AT&T’s move will, for the moment, prevent the FCC from making public its many, well-documented findings that the deal is not in the public interest and will prevent the judge overseeing the antitrust lawsuit from seeing the FCC’s conclusions.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

this is designed as another talking shop to give industry lobbyists an opportunity to bend the ear of European politicians. Conspicuous by their absence, of course, are any representatives of those most affected by legislation — the public. It’s also a chance for copyright maximalists to get together and repeat the same unsubstantiated claims about the “damage” caused by piracy and the need for urgent action, as Gallo’s first conference, “IPR enforcement in the digital era”, makes clear

Sadly, Techdirt uses the same loaded language as the maximalists instead of challenging terms like “piracy.”

Some firms have created tens of thousands of fake accounts to flood chat forums and skew debate. … They give the example of a spike in activity on a World of Warcraft chat forum on the Chinese website Baidu. … A PR company later claimed it had employed 800 individuals to run 20,000 separate accounts on the site … The US military is known to use fakes to infiltrate chat forums to gather information about potential terror groups. Similarly many Facebook pages are plagued by bogus friends and “social bots” that are used to stage debates.

The Supreme Court, in the 5-4 Citizens United decision of January 2010, declared that corporations have free speech rights like human beings and invalidated the ban on corporate election spending that Congress had enacted. Since then, a grassroots movement has emerged to generate popular support for a constitutional amendment to reverse that decision, including months of work by Move to Amend, Free Speech For People, Public Citizen, People For The American Way, Common Cause, and the Center for Media and Democracy. Rep. Deutch’s amendment is a blend of the best ideas.

Civil Rights

“Chemical” Linda Katehi, whose crackdown on peaceful university students shocked America, played a role in allowing Greece security forces to raid university campuses for the first time since the junta was overthrown in 1974. … The real problem, from the real powers behind the scenes (banksters and the EU), was how to get Greece under control as the austerity-screws tightened. … that meant taking away the universities’ “amnesty” protection, in place for nearly four decades, so that no one, nowhere, would be safe from police truncheons, gas, or bullets.

Internet/Net Neutrality

our analysis shows that if net neutrality were abolished, ISPs actually have less incentive to expand infrastructure. … placing a price on prioritizing content creates an inherent disincentive to expand infrastructure. ISPs would profit from a congested Internet in which some content providers will be more than willing to pay an additional fee for faster delivery to users. Content providers like the New York Times and Google would have little choice but to fork it over to get their information to end users. But end users would be unlikely to see the promised upgrades in speed. Those are some of the results of research we conducted on the Internet market.

Intellectual Monopolies

In a recent phone interview with AlterNet, [Harriet] Washington discussed the dark implications of corporate medical patents, how we find ourselves in this nightmarish scenario and what needs to be done to stop medical research profits from trumping human health.

Copyrights

In the name of private copy levy, we are deprived of the right to copy! Such negation of the rights of the public is coherent with Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies aimed at turning copyright into a repressive weapon against cultural practices in the hands of industrial lobbies.

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The EPO crisis is not ending for the Administrative Council does not want to tackle any of the obvious problems; Patrick Corcoran is a taboo subject and Ernst is coming across as another protector of Benoît Battistelli, based on today's meeting (the second meeting he chairs)

A rather pessimistic (albeit likely realistic) expectation from tomorrow's meeting of the Administrative Council, which continues to show that no lessons were learned and no strategy will be altered to avoid doom (low-quality patents and stocks running out)

Three Affiliated Tribes probably won't enjoy sovereign immunity from PTAB, Dennis Crouch won't manage to slow down PTAB, and patent litigation will stagnate as bad patents perish before they even land in a lawsuit

Just when German democracy is being stolen by a legislative coup (in the dead of night when 95% of politicians are absent/asleep) there's someone 'courageous' enough to rear his ugly head and attempt to justify that coup

David Kappos, a former USPTO Director who is now lobbying for large corporations that derive revenue from patent extortion, is writing for IAM even if his views are significantly biased by his aggressive paymasters (just like IAM's)

PO staff is about to protest against the employer, pointing out that "Battistelli is still showing a total and utter lack of respect not only for his staff and their rights but also for the Administrative Council and for the Tribunal"

Benoît Battistelli, who openly disregards and refuses to obey judges (while intervening in trials and delivering 'royal decrees' whenever it suits him), may soon gain direct control over the judge he hates most

The EPO's silence on the matter of Patrick Corcoran is deafening; to make matters worse, the EPO continues to pollute media and academia with money of stakeholders, with the sole intention of lobbying and misleading news coverage (clearly a disservice to these stakeholders)

After initial reluctance to obey/respect the rulings from the ILO (security staff declining access) there is official permission for Patrick Corcoran to enter and resume work (following 3 years of injustice against him)

There are several indications that Microsoft-connected shells, which produce no products and are threatening a large number of companies, are inadvertently if not intentionally helping Microsoft sell "indemnification" ("Azure IP Advantage," which echoes the Microsoft/Novell strategy for collecting what they called "patent royalties" one decade ago)

The US Supreme Court's decision on Alice continues to have a profoundly positive impact (except for trolls) and Koch-funded academics try hard to compel the US Supreme Court to reverse/override Alice (so far to no avail)

The next USPTO boss (still subject to official confirmation) may be little more than a power grab by the litigation and patenting 'industry', which prioritises not science and technology but its own bottom line

The delays associated with ‘justice’ at the EPO (usually neither justice nor compliance with rulings) have become so extraordinary that immunity should long ago have been stripped off and Battistelli et al been held accountable

How the EPO broke down resistance to Battistelli’s oppressive policies not only at the Council, disciplinary committees and auditory divisions but also staff representation (symptomatic of Battistelli’s notion of justice)